ACCENT JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS ECOLOGY & ENGINEERING Peer Reviewed and Refereed Journal, ISSN NO. 2456-1037
Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE
Vol. 07, Issue 10, October 2022 IMPACT FACTOR: 7.98 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) 28 THE UNREST AND DECAY OF PARSEE COMMUNITY IN THE NOVELS FAMILY
MATTERS
Ajay Kumar Research Scholar Dr. Sanjeev Kumar
Assistant Professor, Department of English, D.A.V. (P.G.) College, Bulandshahar
Abstract - The purpose of this paper is to show "The unrest and decay of parsee community in novel of family matters"
Rohinton Mistry born in 1952 focus on the Parsi culture in India, particularly in Mumbai, and their challenges. He honed his writing by drawing on his Persian heritage, and he started to use it to depict the experiences and way of life of Parsis in Mumbai. For his services to the journal and to English literature, the Canadian Fiction Magazine honored him with the Annual Contributors Award in 1985. His book Such a Long Journey was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and received the Trillium Award. The book Such a Long Journey also won three other honours, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best Book, the Governor General's Award, and the Books in Canada First Novel Award.
Although Mistry is recognised as a diaspora writer who mostly writes about Parsis, he has insisted that his works are not primarily about the Parsi way of life. Similar to this, he regards politics as a side concern even if many of his tales have a political undertone.
1 INTRODUCTION
A product of post-colonial periods is Indian Parsi writer Rohinton Mistry, who moved to Canada in 1975 from Bombay (now Mumbai). Beginning with his 1987 collection of short stories Tales from Ferozsha Baag, Mistry has since written three major novels: Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1997), and Family Matters (2002), as well as a novella called The Scream (2008), which was published in a limited edition (only 150 copies) to raise money for a Canadian charity. The Indian Parsi (also known as Parsee) community is the major subject of all these literary works. However, it would be unfair to the author if he were merely seen as a representation of his town since his concerns goes beyond local issues to adopt a humanistic perspective. The greatest and most applicable kind of postcolonialism in the modern world is this.
Postcolonialism, which began with the theorization of the liberation efforts of the colonised people, has advanced considerably. India was one of the nations that engaged in this conflict with the former British monarchs. Mahatma
Gandhi developed concepts for an Indian postcolonial society in addition to leading the battle in the first-ever successful nonviolent experiment. Because of his intrinsic spirituality, he was able to perceive everyone as equal, thus the concept of being subjugated—whether by an outside force or by our own people or other subalterns—was repugnant to him.
He was similarly passionate about the local culture, which is seen in his support of Ram Rajya and village industries. It is unfortunate that he did not live long enough and that those who claimed to be his successors so deftly ignored his ideology and engaged in politics similar to what the British did, as a result, the deplorable condition of the underclass in our society has not improved.
Ame Cesaire and Leopold Senghor discussed the Black identity that had been repressed by the colonists in Africa at a later date. Franz Fannon proposed that the colonizer's repeated presentation of the local people in a bad light caused the latter to accept the identical falsehoods that the coloniser had spread about them. Even if the native attempts to
ACCENT JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS ECOLOGY & ENGINEERING Peer Reviewed and Refereed Journal, ISSN NO. 2456-1037
Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE
Vol. 07, Issue 10, October 2022 IMPACT FACTOR: 7.98 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) 29 imitate western cultural norms and wears
a "white mask," it still illustrates how dominant culture is. The Arab philosopher Edward Said examined the colonists' distorted Orientalist perspective. His division between the self and the other was fundamental to postcolonial theory.
The Indian scholar Homi Bhabha updated the idea of mimicry in the 1990s to include hybridity. The hybridised native occupies a condition of in-betweenness between his acquired Englishness and original Indianness, and the same is true of the coloniser, with the latter portion prompting scepticism in many areas.
Gayatri Chakravarti Spivak was left to bring up the basic issue of the subaltern's inadequate representation since he was not heard and lacked the influence or authority that came with speaking English. At the moment, the only discourse used to depict the third world is Western (Malik, 143–47).
Regardless of gender, class, ethnicity, creed, or any other factor, the position of the "other" as a colonised or oppressed person is undoubtedly the main focus of postcolonial studies. This emphasis on the need of justice is a humanistic concern that further raises the problem of identity, namely the identity of the oppressed and the subaltern, which the coloniser or an authoritarian system seeks to obliterate or mutilate. Postcolonial philosophy, which emerged from the battle for independence, has a clear political bias in favour of resistance to any government that seeks to repress people in the manner of the coloniser.
The colonial story eventually came into contact with the postmodern globalised world, where travel across political borders and continents is becoming more common. The immigrant's points of contact with locals and the ensuing interaction of his culture with local customs are constantly expanding, necessitating equal dealings even if previous interactions had been along
racial or colonizer/colonized lines or along the lines of white/black or brown. This was, and still is, the situation postcolonial studies are now confronting.
Postcolonialists believe that they are faced against an increasingly commercialised world without any room to account for the negative impact that globalisation brings to bear on them, taking up the case of the subaltern and the weak within any free society. If postcolonial theory is to remain relevant in postmodern times, it must naturally develop from this starting point into a more inclusive and wide humanist perspective in the global community. Even Frenz Fanon, a proponent of the violent overthrow of the coloniser, saw the need of forging bonds of solidarity among colonial people based on a common history of suffering, regardless of their race.
However, the new postcolonial theory does not exclusively support humanism. It has long been seen as valuable in Indian and Parsi traditions, which are quite similar in many aspects.
These are some of the world's earliest civilizations. The Prophet Zarathushtra is said to have been born about 2000 B.C., and the Parsis, the inhabitants of ancient Iran, belonged to the Indo-European branch of the Aryans. Mistry has Nariman Vakeel teach his grandson about the splendour of ancient Iran in his book Family Matters. The Arab Muslims' conquest of ancient Persia marked the beginning of the Parsi people's exodus from Persia (modern-day Iran) to India.
They arrived on the Gujarat coast as part of an arrangement with the local monarch that lasted from 785 to 1021 A.D. and had as its main motivating principle the emotion of humanism. The reputation of the Parsis as a peaceful, hardworking people who contribute to the improvement of their chosen country is well established. They have faithfully maintained their pledge to live in harmony with other groups.
Indian descent gives Canadian author Rohinton Mistry notoriety. A well-
ACCENT JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS ECOLOGY & ENGINEERING Peer Reviewed and Refereed Journal, ISSN NO. 2456-1037
Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE
Vol. 07, Issue 10, October 2022 IMPACT FACTOR: 7.98 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) 30 known American author and broadcaster
named Rick Gekoski recently remarked:
"Mistry has a keen eye and a tremendous heart, and even if the world he paints is sometimes harsh and arbitrary, his characters have a remarkable ability to endure." Rohinton Mistry is the only author whose books have all made the Man Booker Prize shortlist, which is a remarkable accomplishment. His writing eventually expands into the social, cultural, and political background after beginning with a family and moving outward as the characters grow. He has a remarkable ability to hold readers' interest. Great writer Rohinto Mistry has a keen eye for detail and a creative
imagination. The distinctive feature of his work is that, to far, his publications have covered a wide range of socioeconomic and cultural aspects of India as well as the way of life, traditions, and religion of the Parsis. Read on!
REFERENCES
1. Mistry, Rohinton. Family Matters. London:
Faber and Faber, 2002.
2. Mistry, Rohinton. Such a Long Journey.
London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
3. Mistry, Rohinton. Tale from Firozsha Baag.
London: Faber and Faber 1987.
4. Mistry, Rohinton. The Scream. London: Faber and Faber 2004.
